Rob Carr/Getty ImagesLadarius Green's (r.) touchdown puts the Chargers up for good against the Bengals.
CHARGERS 27, BENGALS 10
CINCINNATI - Even the rain and the cold and a cross-country trip to Cincinnati couldn't cool the red-hot San Diego Chargers.
Get ready for Philip Rivers-Peyton Manning, Part Three. On Sunday afternoon, the last team into the AFC wildcard playoffs won its fifth straight game, beating the Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium, 27-10, and looking suspiciously like a Super Bowl contender. The win sets up a third meeting between Rivers' Chargers and Manning's top-seeded Denver Broncos next weekend in Denver.
Suddenly, the 9-7 Chargers are red hot. A blown call by the refs against the Chiefs last week got them into the postseason, and they're making the most of the opportunity.
The Chargers won on Sunday behind an excellent afternoon from the most underappreciated quarterback in the fabled 2004 NFL draft, Philip Rivers. Rivers got off to a slow start, but he made few mistakes, doing exactly what was needed to win. He threw six passes in the entire first half, then completed six on the Chargers' first drive of the second half. The last pass was four-yard fade to Ladarius Green in the end zone, a play that gave San Diego a 14-10 lead.
Bengal quarterback Andy Dalton would spend the next six Cincy offensive plays unwittingly helping the Charger cause from there, routinely setting them up for points. Three plays into the next possession, Dalton scrambled for a first down on third-and-14. As he dove forward, he lost the ball, a fumble since he was diving instead of sliding. San Diego's Jahleel Addae recovered, and Rivers would lead the Chargers downfield for a 25-yard Nick Novak field goal.
Dalton would botch things on the next possession, too. Flushed from the pocket on third-and-8 from his own 26, he threw a tough pass to Mohamed Sanu. But Shareece Wright read the play the entire way, pulled off an outside receiver and picked off the pass, returning it to the Cincy 3. That set up a 23-yard Novak field goal at the start of the fourth quarter, a play that gave San Diego a 20-10 lead.
A possession later, just for good measure, Dalton was intercepted again, picked off by linebacker Melvin Ingram, who cut in front of tight end Tyler Eifert.
It all wrecked a quietly solid first half by Cincy. The Bengals grabbed the lead just before halftime, 10-7, on a 46-yard Mike Nugent field goal. Jermaine Gresham set up that field goal with a 13-yard catch along the sidelines, a play that was reviewed because it looked as if he had put the football on the ground after he'd taken two steps. But the play was correctly ruled a catch, and Nugent nailed the field goal.
Before that, this game was mostly quiet. The Chargers gained 86 of their 122 first-half yards on their second possession of the game, when Danny Woodhead capped a 14-play drive with a five-yard TD run. That put the Chargers ahead, 7-0, in a game they seemed to control early on. But Cincy would get going early in the second quarter, when Dalton led a 10-play, 60-yard drive. On second-and-goal from the 4, he was hit from behind by Melvin Ingram, but not before he fired the ball to Gresham for a game-tying TD.
Cincy should have gone up even more when, a San Diego three-and-out later, Jones laid out for Dalton's 49-yard pass to the Charger 35. But a play later, Gio Bernard caught a short pass and fumbled as he ran toward the end zone, giving the ball back to San Diego.
Posted by Unknown on Sunday, January 5, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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